


bleeding in the night

by heather_in_hell



Category: Heathers (1988), Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: AU, Angst, Blood and Violence, F/M, Fluff, Halloween 2018, Happy halloween, Hurt/Comfort, Magic, Romance, Swearing, Witchcraft, not intended to be representative of actual witchcraft, this is all in good fun and fiction people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-09 22:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16458479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heather_in_hell/pseuds/heather_in_hell
Summary: Bloodied and bruised after an altercation on Halloween night, JD reluctantly finds refuge in Veronica's home - and world. AU where Veronica is a witch.





	bleeding in the night

**Author's Note:**

> happy halloween! halloween is my fav holiday, and i was inspired to write this after binge watching the chilling adventures of sabrina on netflix. it's a little CW corny and at times ~problematic~, but the witchy aesthetics are delightful and really got me in the mood for halloween. as noted in the tags, this isn't intended to be a true representation of real witchcraft, in case anyone reading this practices it and was going into this story thinking it would be accurate. i know very little about it, and though i'd love to learn more, this fic is all in good fun and is purely fictional.

With every staggering step JD takes, the throb in his abdomen grows stronger and stronger, vibrating throughout his body as though the invisible hand of the God he doesn’t believe in is reaching down and digging his fingers into all his bruises at once. JD never cared much for holidays, but in every town and city he’s lived in, Halloween always seemed to be the one in which the douchebags came out to play.

 

Whether it was asshole teenagers that used Halloween as an excuse to get shitfaced and teepee someone’s house, or trick-or-treating bratty children whose cries could be heard from down the street, JD knew to stay stowed away in his room on Halloween. Horror movies are fun to watch all year round, anyway. It’s cathartic to watch idiots get slashed to pieces, he thinks.

 

In a way, JD sort of expected to make short term enemies in a small town like Sherwood, where everyone knows everyone and their mothers. When he beat up those jocks and scared the shit out of them in the cafeteria, he’d known their animalistic masculinity wouldn’t let them back down from the new kid. He fully anticipated arriving at school the next week to be greeted with persistent mockery, and perhaps, a demand for a rematch.

 

He just hadn’t thought of it being a surprise one.

 

And so, here he is, limping home with gritted teeth after being jumped by Kurt and Ram on his way home from a 7-11 run to buy cigarettes. He’d barely gotten a puff of his first smoke in when a grip circled itself around his arms and a sucker punch was delivered directly to the left side of his jaw.

 

“Happy Halloween, pussy boy!” a crazed voice sneered, clearly either Kurt or Ram – they were too interchangeable for JD to tell apart. “Let’s kick his sorry ass!” the other declared.

 

He was thrown to the ground before he had a chance to defend himself, being kicked and socked in every part they could reach. He peaked up at them long enough to realize they were wearing cheap masks, one Michael Myers and one Freddy Krueger. Of course.

 

All this for a pack of cigarettes, so small and insignificant and bound to kill him anyway.

 

They decided they were done after a few minutes and ran into their getaway car, laughing like manic hyenas as the engine roared to life and they were gone. JD didn’t want to admit it – he had felt pain before – but those jocks had done quite the fucking damage.

 

The night air is crisp. It feels good on his bloody lip and aching muscles. It’s close to midnight, and the children have mostly gone home. It’s just him and the night, only his bruises to keep him company, and to remind him he can actually still feel.

 

“JD?”

 

A voice coming from a house on his left calls out his name. Underneath the dim porch light stands Veronica Sawyer, her long shadow cast tall and slim like a black snake along the yard. She’s dressed in a large sweatshirt, shorts, and fuzzy blue slippers, hair half thrown up in a sloppy pony tail. The yellow porch light glows around her head like a halo.

 

JD is dumbfounded. Is he dreaming this? Was he killed back there? Of all people to find him stumbling along the sidewalk, it had to be Veronica, seemingly the only person at his new school with a soul. He doesn’t know whether to be embarrassed or relieved.

 

“Uh, hey,” he says lamely. His voice is pure coarse sand. The words scratch their way up his throat.

 

“Hey.” She walks off her porch and approaches him. “Um, I just saw someone walking down my street through my window. I thought it was you.” She eyes him curiously. “You going as a zombie for Halloween? That’s a pretty convincing costume.”

 

She freezes as soon as she says it. She knows real blood from red corn syrup.

 

The corner of his mouth twitches weakly. “I’m more of a method costume wearer myself.”

 

“Oh God,” Veronica breathes, her hands nervously hovering around him. “You’re hurt. What happened?”

 

“Nothing,” he says monotonously, dreading being made a big deal over. “I got jumped. I’ve had worse.”

 

“Jumped?” Veronica gasps. “What? By who?”

 

“Forget it,” he snaps. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

 

He attempts to get around her, but she’s in front of him in an instant with her hands gently placed on his arms to hold him back. “Stop it. Don’t try to go home by yourself, you can barely walk in a straight line.”

 

“Ver-”

 

“Don’t argue with me,” she interrupts sternly, a fire in her eyes, and JD shuts up. Mixed in with her anger is concern as her eyes sweep over the strained way he’s holding himself, and the cut on his upper lip, and the purple patch blooming on his cheek.

 

“Come inside,” she says, throwing his arm over her shoulders. “I’ll help you with those wounds.”

 

“You really don’t-”

“What did I say? Don’t argue with me,” she repeats, and she’s half dragging him into her house before he can protest further. She’s tiny, but stronger than she looks as she stabilizes his clumsy steps. He can smell the faint remains of what smells like a rose perfume on her, and JD suspects his injuries aren’t all that’s influencing his intoxicated movements.

 

They manage to make it up the stairs in a reasonable amount of time due to JD biting the inside of his cheek and pushing through the aches in his body punctuated with the occasional groan in pain. Veronica throws the door to her room open and gets JD sat down on the blue quilted bed. The room is spinning and his head immediately drops down to his knees.

 

“Here, JD,” Veronica says in a hushed voice. “Lay down. Careful…that’s it…let me get something for that.”

 

She’s out and in the room faster than what feels normal, carrying a first aid kit retrieved from her bathroom.

 

“Is this real?” JD wonders aloud, staring up at the ceiling. Veronica can’t help but smirk. She sits on her knees next to him on the bed.

 

“Yes, dummy. Now let me help you get your jacket off. I’ll be gentle, I promise.”

 

He’d normally decline an offer like this and take it off himself, but he’s already horizontal on her comfortable bed, already trapped in the lull of pain swaying him back and forth like steady waves, and he doesn’t have the strength to continue to refuse. He lets her move him like a ragdoll, pulling his jacket off his shoulder and out from underneath him.

 

“Um, is it okay if I take your shirt off?” she asks with a slightly timid tone, not meeting his eyes. “Sorry, I just…have to get to your injuries. You look pretty scuffed up all over.”

 

JD chuckles darkly. “Is that why you brought me up here, Sawyer? To get me naked?”

 

She’s one of those people whose flush is entirely noticeable, especially on her pale skin. Not even the unsaturated light coming from her bedside lamp can mask it, and JD loves it. “I…” she starts, but JD decides not to torture her any longer.

 

“I’m kidding, Sawyer,” he says. “Be my guest.”

 

Even in his pained state, the feeling of her fingertips brushing against his sides as she lifts the t-shirt over his head sends warm chills down his spine.

 

There’s a shelf full of different sized and multicoloured candles across from the bed behind Veronica that catches his eye. They look like they’re crying bulbous tears of wax, hardened to the sides after being lit so many times. They form an irregular rainbow hill along the wall and JD finds himself entranced by them. 

 

“Are you gonna tell me what happened?” her voice brings him back to earth as she opens the first aid kit. “There’s no way you can’t tell me. You’re in my house now.”

 

“And what’ll you do if I refuse?”

 

“I’ll send you out on the street like a stray dog,” she deadpans. JD stares at her in silence before she breaks and laughs.

 

“My turn to kid. I would never. But come on, don’t you think you owe it to me for playing nurse?”

 

“Something I never asked you to do,” JD mumbles. “…but if you really wanna know for whatever reason, I’m afraid it’s not that interesting of a story. I didn’t save some old lady from being mugged or whatever. It was…those fuck heads, Kurt and Ram.”

 

Veronica’s mouth opens in shock. “They just…jumped me,” JD continues. “In fucking dollar store Halloween masks, of all things. Guess they wanted payback after what went down in the cafeteria. Which I wouldn’t have minded, but I could have used some preparation.”

 

“Oh my God,” Veronica spits through bared teeth, gripping the bedsheets underneath them as though to shred them apart. “I’ll kill them. I swear I’ll kill them.”

 

JD’s amused by her sincerity. Slightly turned on, even, at the way her voice drips with poison and her brow furrows with rage. His mind wanders to if her brow furrows like that when she’s being kissed hard, or what her voice would sound like with his hands sliding up her back underneath her thick sweatshirt. He should feel guilty at having such ravenous, carnal thoughts when she’s offering up her home and assistance to him, but the pulsating pain in his head prevents him from feeling too much shame.

 

“You killing Kurt and Ram? That’s a sight I’d pay to see,” JD jokes.

 

“I’m serious,” she says. “Those fucking assholes, thinking they can do whatever they want and get off scot free. And to do it in masks, in the dead of night! Those cowards.”

 

“Hey,” he says weakly, “no use worrying about it right now.”

 

“I’m so sorry, JD,” she says tiredly, worn out from having witnessed and experienced this barbaric behaviour her whole life.

 

“It’s not your fault,” he tells her, brushing his fingers over her hand next to him with what little strength he possesses.

 

They’re quiet for a moment. Veronica’s gaze darts from JD’s bruised knuckles to the first aid kit.

“You know, I have to admit I don’t know a lot about taking care of someone or stitching someone back together,” she says. “Not in this way.”

 

Her face goes blank. She’s looking at the headboard of her bed in contemplation and JD can’t read her expression. He feels alone in the silence, disconnected from her impenetrable brain.

 

“What are you thinking?” he asks.

 

She shakes her head and smiles in a disbelieving way, like she’s convincing herself of a bad idea. “JD,” she says, “You’d consider us…friends, right?”

 

An eyebrow raises at the question. “I suppose I would, friend.” _I wouldn’t mind being more,_ he thinks.

 

“And you trust me?”

 

“You’re sort of weirding me out here.”

 

“Do you?”

 

He nods carefully. She looks down at her hands folded in her lap and takes a deep breath in.

 

“Then trust me now.”

 

As soon as the words leave her lips, the shelf of previously unlit candles suddenly spark to life and long orange and blue flames flicker on their wicks. A warm, woodsy scent overwhelms the room. JD blinks rapidly three times.

 

“What…your candles-”

 

“Shhh,” she hushes. “You have to trust me.”

 

Veronica reaches down into the neck of her sweatshirt and flips out a necklace, thumbing the pendant attached to the chain. JD sees the little black star and recognizes it as a pentagram.

 

JD begins to believe his eyes are deceiving him from the pain turning into a devious trickster and messing with his brain, but Veronica’s shadow, as though by its own will, moves from the bed to the ceiling, dark and sharp and more vivid than a shadow on pavement under direct sunlight. It casts over her like a guardian angel, staring down at JD with a black, eyeless gaze.

 

She places her hands on JD’s bare abdomen directly over an ugly bruise the colour of storm, careful not to place too much pressure into it. She closes her eyes, eyelashes fluttering delicately, and begins to recite something in a whisper. Her lips move so quickly and undefined that JD can’t make out what she’s saying, though it doesn’t sound anything like English. Her syllables blend together into a continuous, muddled hush. JD notices her eyes moving behind her eyelids, the thin skin of them twitching abnormally.

 

He’s about to say something when heat, comfortable but on the verge of being too hot, blooms across his stomach. JD looks down, sees Veronica’s hands pressed there, sees the ultraviolet flames sprouting from her palms and licking his skin, and surges up into a sitting position, ignoring the pain.

 

“What the fuck?” he half yells, voice caught in his throat. “What the fuck is that? What are you doing?”

 

“JD, shhh,” she says, calmly but with concern in her eyes. “Listen, I promise I’m not going to hurt you. You’ll be fine, I’m trying to help you. But you need to stay still.”

 

“Your hands are on fire, Veronica!” he wheezes, almost beginning to laugh at being the rational one in the room.

 

“Yeah, thanks for stating the obvious.”

 

“I…how?” is all he can say.

 

“I’ll explain everything after,” she says. “But you’re safe. I need you to be still so I can concentrate. Please, JD. Let me help you.”

 

He hasn't taken his eyes off the flames on the palms of her hands. They don’t move as jolty and aggressively as the flames on a campfire, but instead are more fluid, like a strange, otherworldly element of water and fire combined.

 

“Burning me alive is going to help me be in _less_ pain?”

 

“I know it looks fucked up,” she says. “But you have to trust me when I tell you it’ll work. You trust me, right?”

 

JD is dead silent, looking at her like she’s escaped an insane asylum. But her eyes are so wide, so locked onto his like she depends on his affirmation. The fluid-like flames are reflective in her eyes and the cedar scent in the room make his brain feel thick and foggy. He doesn’t know how a girl still could look so beautiful on fire.

 

“Yes,” he whispers.

 

“Thank you,” she replies, her voice like honey. “Lay back. Close your eyes if you have to. It’ll be done in no time.”

 

He obeys and lays back against the cool pillows. Their eyes meet as she repositions her hands on his stomach, the heat reappearing. She closes her eyes once more and resumes the whispered reciting of the unknown language, and ever so slowly, she slides her hands up his abdomen, up his sternum, up his chest, and to the base of his neck. She repeats the motion, going back down and up again several times. He knows she said he could close his eyes if he wanted, but he can’t. He can only stare in pure and utter astonishment at the sheer craziness of the situation and the concentration in her face. He’s under her spell.

 

The flames don’t burn at all. He knows what being burned feels like, having been a reckless kid and accidentally searing himself on open fires and stove tops. But these flames, whatever they are, have the effect of a numbing shower, heat cascading up and down wherever Veronica touches and leaving behind the most soothing, somewhat paralyzing sensation JD’s ever felt, like he’s been buried in a field of lavender and it’s begun to bud in his body.

 

Veronica then cups his face between her hands and his eyes go wide. She senses it without seeing, and she opens her eyes to pause, smiling down at him sweetly and reassuringly.

 

“It’s okay,” she murmurs. “I won’t hurt you, remember? Relax.”

 

At this point, he hears her words as though she’s God – and she very well could be for all he knows. So he listens, follows her into the indigo blaze willingly.

 

She strokes her fingers across his bruised cheek and forehead, secretly taking time to admire the planes of his face. Her fingers swipe softly over the cut on his upper lip and he breathes deeply, staring up at her in enchantment. 

 

Positioning her fingers on JD’s temples, Veronica’s lips stop moving and the heat fades from either side of his head. She leans back and opens her eyes. The flames on the candles, and her hands, have vanished, thin trails of smoke rising from the wicks behind her.

 

“How do you feel?” she asks, breaking the silence.

 

JD is able to lift his head with ease. The aching in his body has diminished, and completely disappeared in some areas. He looks down at himself to see the bruises are either gone or faded into nearly non-existent pale yellow and purple splotches, like watercolour paint. He sits up with caution, expecting pain again, but it doesn’t come, at least not in a way that incapacitates him.

 

“Better,” he breathes incredulously.

 

“Sorry, I know it’s not perfect,” she says, rubbing the back of her neck with a shrug. “Healing spells aren’t my strongest suit.”

 

He just stares at her, waiting for her to say more, because what the hell does that mean?

 

“Uh, yeah,” she mutters. “I’m a witch.”

 

He blinks.

 

“A what?”

 

She touches the pentagram on her neck again. “A witch. True story.”

 

“ _Witches_ can’t be-”

 

“Real, I know,” she cuts in. “We can only exist in folklore and movies. But we live in the world amongst mortals, JD. We always have.”

 

She goes on when he doesn't respond, just sits there, rendered flabbergasted. “There aren’t a lot in my family. It’s…inherited, but my parents didn’t get it. I was lucky, I guess.”

 

All he can do is gape at her. Her tone is effortless and breezy, as though they’re discussing the weather over coffee.

 

“You’re…”

 

“A freak?” Veronica says, rolling her eyes and turning her face away from him. “Go ahead and say it. Run out screaming. It’s Halloween anyway, so no one will be suspicious-”

 

“No, no, no,” JD interjects quickly. He grabs her hand, holds it firmly, faint bruised knuckles encasing her slender, black painted fingertips. “That’s not what I meant…that’s not how I feel.”

 

It isn't the response she’s expecting. She faces him, sees his astounded and curious face, and the image makes her heart soar.

 

“You’re not a freak,” he says. “You’re amazing. I still suspect I might be dreaming or I actually died tonight, and this is my weird introduction to hell, but…you’re amazing. You fixed me. You fixed me!”

 

His astonishment borderlines onto childlike, and she can’t help but smile at the couldn’t-care-less new boy fawning over the powers she’s learned to hide from the world.

 

“Well, I can tell you you’re for sure not in hell,” she says. “I’ve been there, and it doesn’t quite look like a girl’s bedroom.”

 

He can’t tell if she’s joking, and when she doesn’t elaborate, he goes on. “Colour me impressed, but…why? Why would you show me all of this?”

 

She shakes her head and smiles down at their still interlocked hands. It hasn’t occurred to her until now that she doesn’t have a clear answer to that question. Why did she invite a mortal boy into her home, let him see a glimpse into her world? How have her years of secrecy been turned to dust at the expense of one boy? Veronica prided herself on not wasting her time with stupid cow town, immature boys and their antics to persuade her into sleeping with them. She would not be bound to anyone. And then a boy came bleeding in the night.

 

“You’re not the only mortal to know about witches, so don’t go thinking you’re special,” she says. _But why do you feel so special? Who are you?_

 

“But I don’t go running around telling people about it for a reason,” she adds. “Given how history has treated and perceived us, I don’t think that would be the best idea.” He sees her struggling to find words and waits for her to continue.

 

“I don’t know why I told you,” she admits. “I don’t know what it is about you, Jason Dean. I can’t put my finger on it. Some cosmic force is compelling me to trust you.”

 

“I wouldn’t tell,” he says, squeezing her hand gently. She likes the way hers fits perfectly in his, wouldn’t mind if he held her so tightly that she began to see stars. “Besides, who would I have to tell? And who would believe I met a girl who could conjure fire from her hands?”

 

“Do you believe it?” she asks. He stares into the depths of her dark brown eyes, cool like earth but somehow warm as the sun. He doesn’t remember when he got so close to her, their faces mere inches apart.

 

“I…think I do,” he says. “I don’t believe in a lot of things, but if I had to start, something like this is more real to me than anything else in my life right now.”

 

She giggles. She wants to ask if she missed a spot when healing his head - he came to terms with everything a little too quickly – but his strange acceptance of this whole ordeal strikes boldness and an unfamiliar excitement in her soul. She reaches up and brushes back a few strands of hair falling onto his forehead, savours watching his throat move as he swallows.

 

“That makes me glad, more than you could know,” she tells him. “I think you should stay here tonight. I didn’t heal everything, and you need to rest. I won’t cast a love enchantment spell on you or anything. I promise you’re a free man.”

 

“I wouldn’t mind if you did,” he says, voice as low and gravelly as the bottom of the sea, his hand at the small of her back. “But in all honesty, you wouldn’t need to.”

 

She takes his face between her hands and brings their lips together, at first with the gentlest, feather-light pressure, but quickly turning more passionate. JD brings his free hand to cradle the back of her neck, brushing the soft hair at the nape while the other slowly slides under her sweatshirt, trailing softly up the middle of her back. His touch makes her sigh against his mouth, moving her hands down his neck, to his collarbone, to rest on his biceps. He can taste the sweet peppermint lip salve on her lips, and his mind spins again like he's been knocked out more than once tonight.

 

They break apart when they both feel like they need to breathe or die by suffocation. Veronica smiles warmly at him, still impossibly close.

 

“Don’t worry, I won't kill you in your sleep and use your bones in a potion," she laughs breathlessly. "I’m a good witch.”

 

“I’m not worried,” JD tells her, earnestly, mystified but unafraid of her, knowing wholeheartedly that she’s so, so good.

 

She presses her forehead to his tenderly, like she heard his thoughts. He wouldn’t be surprised if she really could at this point.

 

“Thank you,” he says. “For saving my ass tonight.”

 

“You’re welcome,” she replies. “You should sleep. Hopefully your injuries will lessen some more in the morning.”

 

He wishes he could stay up all night long learning about her world, where she came from, who she is. But the drowsiness starts to take him, and what little dull ache left in his body adds to his desire to close his eyes. He lets her gently lay him back down onto the pillows. The light goes out without her having to reach for it.

 

She follows him, nestled at his side as to not disturb the remnants of bruises adorning his body. Perhaps he’ll wake up in the morning in his own bed - or one in a hospital - to discover he dreamt the whole thing up – Veronica is a witch, Veronica is a witch, Veronica is a witch. He shouldn’t believe it, and yet he has no restrictions. JD allows the night, and Veronica, take him into darkness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i sort of drew a little inspiration from good old harry potter (with veronica's parents not being magic folk but her still inheriting the trait through other family members, like hermione/muggle borns,) and i like to imagine the kiss at the end being reminiscent of "as long as you're mine" from wicked, with the kneeling/sitting position and all, but that's just me reaching bc i love that song. p.s., this story feels somehow too long and not detailed at once, and i'd love to continue this universe in a time when i'm not drowning in school work! (i'm in my final year at uni, and the work never stops. heather duke is a witch to me, and i'd love to explore that sometime.) this was a long ass note, thanks for reading!


End file.
